Screaming in the Cloud - TikTok and Short Form Content for Developers with Linda Vivah

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Full Description / Show NotesCorey and Linda talk about Tiktok and the online developer community (1:18)Linda talks about what prompted her to want to work at AWS (5:29)Linda discusses navigating the change from just being part of the developer community to being an employee of AWS (10:37)Linda talks about moving AWS more in the direction of short form content, and Corey and Linda talk about the Tiktok algorithm (15:56)Linda talks about the potential struggle of going from short form to long form content (25:21)About LindaLinda Vivah is a Site Reliability Engineer for a major media organization in NYC, a tech content creator, an AWS community builder member, a part-time wedding singer, and the founder of a STEM jewelry shop called Coding Crystals. At the time of this recording she was about to join AWS in her current position as a Developer Advocate.Linda had an untraditional journey into tech. She was a Philosophy major in college and began her career in journalism. In 2015, she quit her tv job to attend The Flatiron School, a full stack web development immersive program in NYC. She worked as a full-stack developer building web applications for 5 years before shifting into SRE to work on the cloud end internally.Throughout the years, she’s created tech content on platforms like TikTok & Instagram and believes that sometimes the best way to learn is to teach.Links Referenced:lindavivah.com: https://lindavivah.com

Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud. This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. When production is running slow, it's hard to know where problems originate.

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Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. We talk a lot about how people go about getting into this ridiculous industry of ours. And I've talked a little bit about how I go about finding interesting and varied guests to show up and help me indulge my ongoing love affair in this show with the sound of my own voice. Today, we're going to be able to address both of those, because today I'm speaking to Linda Haviv, who, as of this recording, has accepted a job as a developer advocate at AWS, but has not started. Linda, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Corey. Happy to be here. So you and I have been talking for a while, and there's been a lot of interesting things I've learned along the way.

You were one of the first people I encountered when I joined the TikToks, as all the kids do these days, and was trying to figure out, is there a community of folks who use AWS, which really boils down to, so where are these people that are sad all the time? Well, it turns out they're on TikTok, so there we go. We found my people. And that was great. And we started talking and it turns out that we were both in the AWS Community Builder Program. And we've developed a bit of a rapport. We talk about different things. And then I guess weird stuff started happening in the context of you're doing very well at building an

audience for yourself on TikTok. I tried it, and it was, my sense of humor sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I've had challenges in finding any reasonable way to monetize it because a 30-second video doesn't really give nuance for a full ad read, for example. And you've been looking at it from the perspective of a content creator looking to build the audience slash platform as step one, and then step two, you'll sort of figure out aspects of monetization later, which honestly is a way easier way to do it in hindsight. But yeah, the things that we learned it now that you're going to AWS, are you first, are you planning to still be on the TikToks and whatnot?

Absolutely. So I really look at TikTok as a funnel. I don't think it's the main place you're going to get that deep dive content, but I think it's a great way, especially for things that excite you or get you into understanding it, especially beginner type audience. I think there's a lot of untapped market of people looking to get into tech or technologists that aren't in the cloud. I mean, even when I worked, I worked as a web developer, and then kind of learned more about the cloud. And I started out as a front end developer and shifted into like SRE and infrastructure. So even for people within tech, you can have a huge tech community,

which there is on TikTok, like a younger community, but not all of them really understand the cloud necessarily depending on their job function. So I think it's a great way to kind of expose people to that. For me, my exposure came from community. I met somebody at a meetup who was working in cloud and it wasn't even on the job that I really started getting into cloud because many times in corporations, you might be working in a specific team and you're not really encountering

other ends. And it seems kind of like a mystery, although it shouldn't seem like magic. Many times when you're doing certain job functions, especially the DevOps end, could end up feeling like magic. So for the good and the bad. So sometimes if you're not working on that end, you really sometimes take it for granted. And so for me, I actually, meetups were the way I got exposed to that end. And then I brought it back into my work and shifted internally and did certifications and started even Lunch and Learns where I work to get more people in their learning journey together within the company and help us as we're migrating to the cloud,

as we're building on the cloud, which of course we have many more roles down the road. I did it for a few years and saw the shift, but I worked in a media company for many years and now I'm shifting data bus. And so I've seen that happen on different ends. Not, oh, I wasn't the one doing the migration because I was on the other end at that time.

But now for the last two years, I was working on the infrastructure end. And so it's really fascinating. And many people actually, till now, I feel like they'll work on maybe the web development and their mobile and don't always know as much about the content. So I think it's a great way to funnel things

in a quick manner. I think also society is getting used to short videos and our attention span is very low. And I think- No argument here. Yeah. And we're spending so much time on these platforms. We might as well learn something. And I think it depends what content, some things works well, some things doesn't. As anything in content creation, you kind of have to do trial and error. But I do find the audience to be a bit different on TikTok versus Twitter versus Instagram versus YouTube, which is interesting how to play it on YouTube too, which is a whole nother conversation. Well, it's odd to me watching

your path. It's almost the exact opposite of mine where I started off on the backend grumpy sysadmin world and oh, why would I ever need to learn JavaScript? No, well, genius, because as the world progresses, guess what? That's right. The entire world becomes JavaScript. Noelle, genius, because as the world progresses, guess what? That's right. The entire world becomes JavaScript. Welcome. And it took me a long time to come around to that. You started with the front-end world and then basically approached it from the exact opposite end. Let's be clear. Back in my day, mine was the common path. These days, yours is very much the common path. I also want to highlight that all of those transitions and careers that you spoke about, you were at the same company for nine years, which in tech is closer to 30. So I have to ask,

what was it that inspired you to, after nine years, to decide, I'm going to go work somewhere else, but not just anywhere. I'm going to AWS. Because normally people become almost institutionalized lifers past a certain point. Like, oh, you'll be there until you retire or die. Whereas seeing significant career change after that long in one place, even if you've moved around internally and experienced a lot of different roles, is not common at all. What sparked that? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's such a good question. I always think about that too, especially as I was reflecting, because I'm in the midst this transition, and I've done a lot of reflecting in the last two weeks, or more. But I think the main thing for me is, I always, wherever I was, and this kind of something that I'm very proactive when it comes to trying to transition, I think, even when I was, right, I held many roles in the same company, I used to work in TV production,

and actually left for three months to go to a coding bootcamp and then came back on the other end. But I understood the product in a different way. So for that time period, it was really interesting to work on the other end. But you know, as I kind of every time I wanted to progress further, I always made a move that was actually new and put me in an uncomfortable place, even within the same company. And at the point now that I'm at my career, I felt like this next step really needs to be, you know, at AWS. It felt like the natural progression for me. I worked alongside on the client end with AWS and have seen so many projects come through and how much our own workloads have changed. And it's just been an incredible journey also dealing with the accounts team on that end.

I've worked alongside them. So for me, it was kind of a natural progression. I was very passionate about cloud computing AWS, and I kind of wanted to take it to that next place. And I felt like also dealing with the community as part of my job is a dream part to me because I was always doing that on the side on social media. So it wasn't part of my day-to-day job. I was working as an SRE and an infrastructure engineer. So I didn't get to do that as part of my day to day was making videos at 2am. And, you know, kind of trying to like do, you know, interact with the community like that. And I think I come from a performing background, a people background, I was singing since I was four years old, I always go to I was a wedding

singer. So I go into a room and I love making people happier giving value. And I think like education has a huge part of that. And in a way, like making that content. You can't teach them the damn thing. Right. Exactly. So it's kind of a mix of everything. It's like that performance, the love of learning, you know, between you and I, like I, I wanted to be a lawyer before I thought I was going to, before I went into tech, I thought I was going to be a lawyer purely because I loved the concept of going to law school. I never took time to think about the law part, like being the lawyer part. I always thought, oh, school. I'm a student at heart. I always call myself a professional

student because I really think that's part of what you need to be in this role in this tech industry. And I think for me, that's what keeps my fire going. I love to experiment, to learn, to build. And there's something very fulfilling about building products. If you take a step back, like you're kind of, you know, for me that, that, that part, every time I look back at that, that always is what kind of keeps me going. When I was doing front end, it felt a lot more like I was doing smaller things than when I was doing infrastructure. So I felt like that was another reason why I shifted. I loved doing the front end, but I felt like I was spending two days

on an Internet Explorer bug and it just drove me, it just made it feel unfulfilling versus spending two days on, you know, trying to understand why, you know, something doesn't run in the infrastructure end or like there's, you know, it's failing blindly, you know, stuff like that. Like, I don't know, for me, that felt more fulfilling

because the problem was more macro, but I think I needed both. I have a love for both, but I definitely prefer the, uh, the backend and then start to, well, I'm saying that now. This might be a weakness on my part where, where I'm basically projecting onto others. And this is, I might be completely wrong on this, but I tend to take a bit of a bifurcated view of community. I mean, community is part of the reason that I know the things I know and how I got to this place that I am. So use that as a cautionary tale if you want. But when I talk to someone like you at this moment, where you're in the community, I'm in the community, and I'm talking to you about a problem I'm having, and we're working on

ways to potentially solve that or how to think about that. I view us as basically commiserating on these things. Whereas as soon as you start on day one, and yes, it's always day one at AWS, and this becomes your day job and you work there. On some level for me, there's like a bit shift that happens and a switch gets flipped in my head where, oh, you actually work at this company. That means you're the problem. And I'm not saying that in a way of being antagonistic. Please, if you're watching or listening to this, do not antagonize the developer advocates. They have a very hard job understanding all this so they can explain it to the rest of us. But how do you wind up planning to navigate or I guess your views on, I guess, handling the shift between one of the customers like the rest of us to, as I say, part of the problem

for lack of a better term. Or like work because you kind of get the feel. I love this question and it's something I've been pondering a lot on because I think the messaging will need to be a little different in the sense of there needs to be just in anything, you have to kind of create trust. To create trust, you have to be vulnerable and authentic. And I think I, for example, utilize a lot of things outside of just the AWS cloud topic to do that now, even when I, you know, kind of building it without saying where I work or anything like that,

going into this role and it being my job, it's going to be different kind of challenge as far as that messaging. But I think it still holds true that that part that just developing trust and authenticity, I might have to do more of that, you know, I might have to really share more of that part, share other things to really because it's more like people come, it doesn't matter how many times you explain it, many times, they will see your title, and they will judge you for it. And they don't know what happened before. Every TikTok, for example, you have to act like it's a new person watching. There is no series, you know?

Like, yes, there's a series, but like sometimes you can make that, but it's not really the way TikTok functions or short form video functions. So you kind of have to think, this is my first time- It works really terribly when you try and break it out that way on TikTok.

Yeah. Right. Here's parts, you see, here's part 17 of my 80 TikTok video saga. And it's, could you just turn this into a blog post or put this on YouTube or something? I, I don't have four hours to spend learning how all this stuff works in your world. Yeah. And you know, I think repeating certain things too is really important. So they say you have to repeat something eight times for people to see it or something like that. I learned that in a row.

Yeah. I mean, the truth is that when you kind of like do a TikTok, maybe like there's something you could also say or clarify. Because I think there's going to be and I'm going to have to there's going to be a lot of trial and error for me. I don't know if I have the answers. But my plan is going into it very much testing that kind of introduction, or like clarifying what that role is, because the truth is, the role is advocating on behalf of the community and really helping that community. So making sure that you have to say it as far as far as the definition, maybe, but like making sure that comes across when you create a video. And I think that's gonna be really important

for me and more important than than prior even creating content going forward. So I think that's one thing that I definitely feel like is key, as well as creating more raw interaction. So it depends on the platform too. Instagram, for example, is much more community. How do I put this? Instagram is much more easy to navigate as far as reaching the same community because you have something like called Instagram stories, right? So on Instagram stories, you're bringing those stories mostly to the same people that follow you. You're able to build that trust through those stories. On TikTok, they just released stories.

I haven't really tried them much and I don't play with it a lot, but I think that's something I will utilize because those are the people that already follow you, meaning they have seen a piece of content. So I think addressing it differently and knowing who's watching what and trying to kind of put yourself in their shoes when you're trying to, you know, teach something is important

for you to have that trust with them. And I think key to everything being raw and authentic. I think people see through that. I would hope they do. And I think, and I think that's what I'm going to be trying to do. I'm just going to be really myself and real and try to help people. And I hope that comes through because that's, i'm passionate about getting more people into the cloud and getting them educated and i feel like it's it's something that could also allow you to build anything just from your just from anywhere on your computer brings people together the world's getting smaller really and um just uh being able to also meet people through that and and there's just a way to also change your life.

People really could change their life. I changed my life, I think, going into tech. I'm in the United States. I'm in New York. I feel like so many people in the States and outside of the States, all over the world, have access to this. It's powerful to be able to build something and contribute and be a part of the future of technology, which AWS is. I feel like in three years or whenever it is that you leave AWS in the far future, we're going to basically pull this video up and MST3K it together. It's like,

remember how naive you were talking about these things? And I'm mostly kidding, but let's be serious. You are presumably going to be focusing on the idea of short form content. That is what your bread and butter of audience building has been around. And that is something that is new for AWS. And I'm always curious as to how companies and their cultures continue to evolve. I don't imagine there's a lot of support structure in place for that. I personally remember giving a talk at an AWS event and I had my slides reviewed by their legal team, as they always do. And I had a slide that they were looking at very closely where I was listing out the top five AWS services that are bullshit. And they don't really have a framework for that. So instead, they did their

typical thing of, okay, we need to make sure that each of those services starts with the appropriate AWS or Amazon naming convention. And are they capitalized properly? Because they have a framework for working on those things. I'm really curious as to how the AWS culture and way of bringing messaging to where people are is going to be forced to evolve now that they, like it or not, are going to be having significantly increased presence on TikTok and other short form platforms. I mean, it's really going to be interesting to see how this plays out. There's so much content that's put out, but sometimes it's just not reaching the right audience. So making sure that funnel exists to the right people is important and reaching those

audiences. So I think even YouTube shorts, for example, many people in tech use YouTube to search a question. They do not care about the intro sometimes. It depends what kind of following, it depends if you're in gaming, but if you're coming and you're building something, it's like a stack overflow sometimes. You want to know the answer to your question. Now, YouTube Shorts is a great solution to that because many times people want the shortest possible answer. Now, of course, if it's a tutorial on how to build something and it warrants 10 minutes, that's great. Even 10 minutes will be, is considered now shorts because TikTok now has 10 minute videos. But I think TikTok is not searchable in the way YouTube is. And I think let's say YouTube shorts is short form, but very

different type of short form than TikTok is. TikTok hooks matter. YouTube answers to your questions, especially in tech. I wouldn't say everything in YouTube is like that. It depends on the niche. But I think even within short form, there's going to be a different strategy regarding that. So kind of like having that mix, I guess, depending on the platform and audience that's there. Again, trial and error, but we'll see how this plays out and how this will evolve. This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vulture. Optimized cloud compute plans have landed at Vulture to deliver lightning-fast processing power courtesy of third-gen AMD EPYC processors

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bloat. Screaming in the Cloud listeners can try Vulture for free today with $150 in credit when they visit getvulture.com slash screaming. That's G-E-T-V-U-L-T-R dot com slash screaming. My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast. I feel like there are two possible outcomes here. One is that AWS nails this pivot into short form content. And the other is that all your TikTok videos start becoming 10 minutes long, which they now support. Welcome to my TED talk. It's awful. And then you wind up basically being the video equivalent for all of your content of recipes when you search them on the internet, where first they circle the point to death 18 times with back when I was a

small child growing up in the hinterlands, we wound, my grandmother would always make the following stew after she killed the bison with her bare hands. Why did grandma kill a bison? We don't know. And it just leads down this path so they can get long enough content so they can have longer and longer articles to display more ads. And then finally at the end, it's like ingredient one, butter. Ingredient two, there is no ingredient two. Okay, that explains why it's delicious. Awesome.

But I don't like having people prolong it. It's just, just give me the answer I'm looking for. Get to the point. Tell me the story. And I'm really hoping that that is not the direction your content goes in, which I don't think it would, but that is the horrifying thing. And if I, for some chance I'm right, I will look like Nostradamus when we do that MST3. No, no.

I mean, I really am. I always personally, even when I was creating content these last few years and testing different things, I'm really a fan of the shortest way possible because I don't have the patience to watch long videos. And maybe it's because I'm a New Yorker that can't sit down for the life of me, apart from when I code, of course. But I don't like wasting time.

I'm always on the go. I'm with my coffee. That's the kind of style I prefer to bring in videos in the sense of like, people have no time, you know, the amount of content we're consuming is just a bonkers. So I don't think we're, our mind is, is, is really a built for, for consuming this much content every time you open your phone or every time you look, you know, online, it's, It's definitely something that is challenging in a whole different way. But I think where my content, if it's 10 minutes, it better be because I can't shorten it. That's my thing. So you can hold me accountable

to it. I want 10 minutes of content, not three minutes of content in a 10 minute bag. Exactly. So if it's a 10 minute video, it would have been in one hour that I cut down, like meaning a tutorial, a very much technical type of content. I think things that are that long, especially in tech, would be something like on that end. Unless, of course, you know, I'm not talking about like longer videos on YouTube or panels or that kind of thing. I'm talking more like if I'm doing something on TikTok specifically. TikTok also cares about your watch time. So if people aren't interested in it, it's not going to do well, it doesn't matter how many followers you have, which is what I do like

about the way TikTok functions, as opposed to let's say, Instagram, it, Instagram is more like it gives it to your following. And this is the current state, I don't know, it always evolves. But the current state is Instagram reels kind of functions in a way where it goes first to the people that follow you, but like, in a way that's more amplified than TikTok. TikTok tests people that follow you, but if it's not a good video, it won't do well. And honestly, there are many good videos that don't go viral. I'm not talking about that. Sometimes it's also the topic and the niche and the sound and the title. I mean, there's so many people who take a topic and do it in three different ways and one of them goes viral. I mean, there's so many factors that play into it.

And it's hard to really like always, you know, kind of reverse engineer. But I do think that with TikTok, things won't do well more likely if it's not a good piece of content as opposed to, or like too long, right? Not, I shouldn't say not good. The TikTok algorithm is inscrutable to me. TikTok is firmly convinced based upon what it shows me that I am apparently a lesbian, which, okay, fine. Awesome. Whatever. I'm also, it keeps showing me ads for ADHD stuff. And it was like, wow, like how did it know that followed by, oh, right. I'm on TikTok. Nevermind. And I will say at one point it recommended someone to me who looking at the

profile picture, she's my nanny. I have a strong policy of not stalking my household employees on social media. We are not Facebook friends. We are not in a bunch of different areas. How on earth would they have figured this out? I'm filling the corkboard with conspiracy and twine, followed by, wait a minute, we probably both connect from the same Wi-Fi network, which looks like the same IP address. And it probably doesn't require a giant data science team to put two and two together on those things. So it was great. I was all set to do the tinfoil hat conspiracy, but no, no, that's just very basic correlation 101.

And also, this is why I don't enable contacts on TikTok. You know how it says, oh, connect your contacts. Oh, I never do that. Can we look at your contacts? No. Can we look at all of your photos? Absolutely not. Can we track you across apps? Why would anyone say yes to this?

You're going to do it anyway, but I'll say no. Giving it the least privilege. Definitely not. Absolutely. Yeah. But also, when I'm looking at it, the monetization problem is always a challenge on things like this too. Because when I'm, but my guilty TikTok scrolling pleasures hit,

it's basically late at night. I just want to see, I want something to wind down and decompress. And I'm not about ready to watch, hey, would you like to migrate your enterprise database to this other thing? It's, I, no. There's a reason that the ads that seem to be everywhere

and doing well are aimed at the mass market. They're generally impulse buys. Like, hey, do you want to set that thing over there on fire, but you're not close enough to get the job done? Buy this flamethrower today. Done. And great. That is something everyone can enjoy. But these nuanced database products and anything else that's B2B SaaS style stuff, it feels like it's a very tough sell and no one has quite cracked that nut yet. Yeah. And I think the key there, this is I'm guessing and based on what I want to try out a lot is the hook and the way you're presenting it has to be very product focused in the sense that it needs to be very relatable. Even if you don't know anything about tech, you need to be like, for example, in the architecture page on AWS, there's a video about the Emirates going to

Mars mission. Space is a very interesting topic, right? I think a hook, like, do you want to see how, like, how this is built? Like, it's all freely available to see exactly how this was built. Like in my, in the right wording, of course, it might be interesting to someone who's looking for fun fact style content. Now, is it really addressing the people that are building every day? Not really always depends who's on there and the mass market there. And, but I feel like going on the product and the things that are mass market and then working backwards to the tech part of it, even if they learn something and then want to learn more, that's really where I see TikTok. I don't think every platform would be maybe like this,

but that's where I see getting people, kind of inviting them in to learn more, but making it cool and fun. It's very important that it feels cool and fun. So, because you're right, you're scrolling at 2 a.m. Who wants to start seeing that? You know, like, it's all about how you teach. The content is there. The content is, you know, that that's

my thing. It's like the content is there. You don't need to, it's yes, there's the part where things are always evolving. And we need to keep track of that as a whole nother type of thing, which you do very well. Right. And then there's the part where like, the content that already exists, which part is evergreen, meaning which part is like something that could be also is not timely as far as update. For example, well, architect the framework. Yes, it evolves all the time. You always have new pillars, but the guide, the story, that is an evergreen in some sense, because that guide isn't, you know, that whole concept isn't going anywhere.

So, you know, why? How to turn on two-factor authentication for your AWS account. That's evergreen. That's the sort of thing that, and this is the problem I think AWS has had for a long time where they're talking about new features, new enhancements, new releases, but you look at what people are actually doing. And so much of it is just the same stuff again and again, because yeah, that is how most of the cloud works. It turns out that three quarters of companies' production infrastructures tends to run on EC2 more frequently than it tends to run on IoT greengrass. Imagine that. So there's this idea of continuing to focus

on these things. Now, one of my predictions is that you're going to have a lot of fun with this, and at some level, it's going to really work for you. And others, it's going to be hilariously, well, its shortcomings might be predictable. I can just picture now you're at reInvent. You do have a breakout talk and terrific. And you've successfully gotten your talk down to one minute. And then you're sitting there with the remainder, meaning 59, like, oh, right. Yeah. It turns out not everything is short form. Are you predicting any problems going from short form to long form in those instances? I think it needs to go hand in hand, to be honest. I think when you're creating any short

form content, you have stuck, you know, maybe something short is actually sometimes in some ways, right? Harder because you, you really have to make sure, especially in a technical standpoint, leaving things out is sometimes leaves like a blind spot. And so making sure you're kind of whatever you're educating, you kind of need to be clear. Here's where you learn more. Here's whatever. Here's how I'm going to answer

this next question for you. Go here. Now, in a longer form content, you would cover all that. So there's always that longevity. I think even when I write a script and there's many scripts, I've had many ideas.

Till now, I've been doing this till 2 a.m. So of course, there's many that didn't get released. But those are the things that are more time consuming to create because you're taking something that's an hour long and trying to make sure you're pulling out the things that are most um they're that are hook style that invite people in that are accurate okay that really give you explain to you clearly where the blind spots that i'm not explaining on this video are so xyz here is like the high level but but by the way, there's like this and this and this. And in a long form, you kind of have to know the long form version of it to make the short form

in some ways, depending on what you're doing, because you're funneling them to somewhere. That's my thing. This is the curse of Twitter on some level. Well, you forgot about this corner case. Yeah, I had 280 characters to get into. The whole point of short form content, which I do consider Twitter to be, is a glimpse and a hook and get people interested enough to go somewhere and learn more. For something like AWS, this makes a lot of sense when you talk, when you highlight a capability or something interesting, it's something relevant. Whereas on the other side of it, where it's this, oh, great.

And now here's an 8,000 word blog post and how I did this thing. Yeah, I'm going to get relatively fewer amounts of traffic through that giant thing. But the people who are there are going to be freaking invested because that's going to be a slog. And now my eight hour video on how exactly I built this thing with TypeScript. Badly, as it turns out, because I'm a bad programmer. No, you're not. I love your shit posting.

Challenge accepted. I love what you just mentioned because I think you're hitting the nail on the head when it comes to the quality content that's niche focused. There needs to be a good healthy mix. I think always doing that mass market type video, it doesn't give you all the credibility you need. So doing those more niche things that might not be relevant to everybody, but here and there are part of that is really key for your own knowledge. And for like, the, you know, as far as like helping someone specific, because it's almost like, right, when you're selling a service, and you're using social media, right? Not everybody's gonna buy your service. It doesn't matter what business you're in, right?

The deep divers are gonna be the people that pay up't matter what business you're in, right? The deep divers are going to be the people that pay up. It's just a numbers game, right? The more people you kind of address from there, you'll find- It's called a funnel for a reason. Free content, paid content. Almost anyone will follow me on Twitter. Fewer of them will sign up for a newsletter. Fewer will listen to a podcast.

Fewer will watch video. And almost none of them will buy a consulting engagement. But almost, and actually none of them, it turns out is a very different world. Exactly. So that's the way it works. And I think there's, there needs to be that niche content that might not be like the most viral thing, but viral doesn't mean quality. You know, it doesn't.

There's many things that play into what viral is, but it's important to have the quality content for that, for the people that need that content. And finding those people is easier when you have that kind of mass engagement. But who knows? I'm a student. I told you I'm a professional student. I'm still learning every day. Working with AWS almost makes it a requirement. I wish you luck in the new gig. And I also want to thank you for taking time out of your day to speak with me about how you got to this point. And we're all very eager to see where you go from here.

Thank you so much, Corey, for having me. I'm a huge fan. I love your content. I'm an avid reader of your newsletter. And I am looking forward to very much being in touch and on the Twitterverse and beyond. If people want to learn more about what you're up to and other assorted nonsense, where's the best place they can go to find you?

So the best place they can go is lyndaviva.com. I have all my different social handles listed on there as well as a little bit about me and I hope to connect with you. So definitely go to lyndaviva.com. And that link will of course be in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Corey for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Corey. Have a wonderful rest of the day. Linda Haviv, AWS developer advocate. Very pseudo, anyway. I'm cloud economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. Whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, smash the like and subscribe buttons, and of course,

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